American peacekeeping troops Friday launched a surprise raid near the town of Kacanik in southeastern Kosovo, seizing a variety of illegally held land mines, U.S. military officials said. Details of the operation were sketchy, but a brief statement from Camp Bondsteel, headquarters for the U.S. peacekeeping force in Kosovo, said the raid was launched by air assault troops of the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry. There was no immediate word on whether the land mines were held by Serbs or ethnic Albanians, or whether anyone was detained in the raid.

U.S. Army Sgt. Evan Vela stood stone-faced Sunday as a court-martial jury sentenced him to 10 years in prison for fatally shooting an Iraqi. Vela, who faced a maximum life sentence, was convicted earlier in the day of murder, making a false statement and planting a weapon on the victim in the May 11 killing. The army forfeited his pay and benefits over the shooting death of Genei Nasir al-Janabi, who stumbled into the hide-out of Vela's five-person sniper team. Vela, 24, will also receive a dishonorable discharge.

Two men narrowly averted death Wednesday when one of the cables on scaffolding from which they were working at 222 N. Dearborn St. slipped and left the apparatus dangling for several minutes 18 stories above the sidewalk. Edward Stavinsky and Joseph Sabala, both workers for Banner Tuck Pointing, were hoisted to safety by lines that were attached to them and tied to the roof, said 1st Battalion Fire Chief William Crawford. "They were shaken up, but not injured," an employee for the firm said.

The U.S. military on Saturday said it was investigating the death of a soldier in eastern Afghanistan as a possible "friendly fire" incident. The Defense Department said Pfc. Justin R. Davis, 19, of Gaithersburg, Md., died June 25 in eastern Kunar province when he came in contact with indirect fire--a term used for mortar shelling--while on patrol during combat operations. "The circumstances of the soldier's death are under investigation as a possible friendly fire incident," the statement said.

A soldier's fiance received a package in the mail with an engagement ring--just hours after learning that her love had been killed in Iraq, his family said. Sgt. Yevgeniy Ryndych, 24, died Wednesday in Ramadi, Iraq, the Defense Department said. "He had proposed over the phone from Iraq within the past month," said the soldier's brother, Ivan Ryndych. "He bought an engagement ring over the Internet." Ryndych, who was born in Ukraine and immigrated to New York City as a teenager, was on his second tour of duty in Iraq, his brother said.

Eight doors in a Ft. Bragg, N.C., Army barracks housing elite Special Forces soldiers were smeared with red swastikas early Tuesday, the Pentagon announced. Authorities restricted 350 soldiers to the base. Black soldiers lived in six of the vandalized rooms, a Ft. Bragg spokesman said. Three white Ft. Bragg-based soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division were charged last December in the racially motivated murders of a black man and woman in nearby Fayetteville. Two were said to have ties with neo-Nazi skinheads.

A man was killed Thursday afternoon when he fell and trapped his head between the elevator doors in a Loop office building, authorities said. D.J. Leach, 40, a truck driver and delivery man, was partially decapitated when he fell to the floor of the manual elevator and his head became stuck between the interior doors, according to 1st Battalion Fire Chief Thomas Barrett. The accident occurred at about 2 p.m. at 185 N. Wabash Ave., Barrett said. Leach, of 5524 W. Iowa St., was pronounced dead on arrival at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to a hospital spokeswoman.